Angry Birds Leading To Angry Businesses

Mobile device management outfit Zenprise has just released its quarterly cloud report for Q1 2012, in which the firm notes that the number of apps blacklisted by businesses has tripled since the previous quarter.

Interestingly, the Q4 2011 report saw Zenprise's customers' blacklisting focus on productivity concerns, with games such as Angry Birds, and time sinks such as Facebook, being the most commonly blocked apps.

Now, however, the most blacklisted apps also have a security, and anti-data leakage, theme; with efforts such as Dropbox and Evernote being placed out of bounds.

For Q1 of this year, Angry Birds is still the top most commonly blocked app, followed by Facebook and Google Play. Dropbox is number four on the hitlist, ahead of YouTube, which is followed by Skype, Evernote and Cydia.

While numbers of blacklisted apps may have tripled, those whitelisted have more than doubled as well. This shows that IT departments aren't just getting ban-happy, but are honing and maturing their overall device management policies, as you would hope.

Funnily enough Skype, which features in the blacklist top ten, is also the most commonly whitelisted app. It's followed by Citrix, Adobe and NitroDesk TouchDown.

What Zenprise calls the "undecided list", apps which made both customer whitelists and blacklists, included not just Skype, but also Citrix, Dropbox, Evernote and Keynote, along with Facebook and Twitter. But not Angry Birds, strangely...